Tag: Peter Laufer

Muffled Voices: Press Censorship in the Former Soviet Union

Presenter: Jonathan Bach

Faculty Mentor: Peter Laufer, Kim Sheehan

Presentation Type: Poster 4

Primary Research Area: Humanities

Major: Journalism

Funding Source: The University of Oregon-UNESCO Crossings Institute, Airfare to Azerbaijan; the University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences, $1914.26 for airfare; the Government of Azerbaijan, hotel and occasional food

Around the globe, countries suffer from constrained media outlets and a lack of access to public information. In the former Soviet Union, there has been a struggle to maintain a balance between media autonomy and censorship. Such censorship hinders reporters’ roles as watchdogs against the government, free to uncover corruption without fear of a threat to their lives. But as I found through research in and outside of Azerbaijan—a country on the Caspian Sea—those at the top of the government come down harshly on journalists who are just doing their jobs. So that I could better understand the ways in which censorship occurs, I conducted interviews via my research fellowship with the University of Oregon-UNESCO Crossings Institute for Conflict Sensitive Reporting and Intercultural Dialogue with journalists and academics in Oregon and Finland. For this thesis, I draw on my experience at the World Forum for Intercultural Dialogue in Baku, Azerbaijan, as well as the experiences of journalists who have worked on press freedom issues in countries like Ukraine. For example, I spoke with Steve Bass, President and CEO of Oregon Public Broadcasting, about his time in Kiev, Ukraine, working with national broadcasters there to develop a cohesive national public station. I also spoke with Juan Barata Mir, who works with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, about the ways in which external officials put pressure on governments like Azerbaijan to release jailed journalists. It’s a common fact that the public has a right to access official information—so when that right’s impeded, there must be backlash.

Guidelines for the Representation of Women in Written News

Presenter(s): Julia Mueller—Journalism

Faculty Mentor(s): Peter Laufer

Session 3: Pens & Clicks are Mightier than the Sword

Researchers have recently begun to realize the impact of patriarchy on language, and the consequential role of male-centric or male-normative language in separating men from women, thus reinforcing women’s roles as the “second sex” in society . Even as society takes strides towards impartiality, implicit bias is still present in the way we speak, write—and specifically, report .

This thesis examines and analyzes current industry standards of style guidelines related to the representation of women in written news in the context of contemporary psychological and linguistic research on the interplay of language and gender . Developing case studies from the results of a survey disseminated to over a thousand journalism professionals in the Pacific Northwest, this project explores current industry practices, newsroom-specific practices, gender-focused trainings or lack thereof, and the survey subjects’ own perceptions of where journalistic standards are lacking with regard to the representation of women in the news .

From 1960 to Now: Beginning a Pen Pal Program Between Oregon and Russia

Presenter(s): Zack Demars—Journalism, Political Science

Faculty Mentor(s): Peter Laufer

Session 3: Pens & Clicks are Mightier than the Sword

As the capstone of nearly a year of reporting by myself and 13 peers, I wrote two chapters of a forthcoming journalistic book on the ground in Rostov-on-Don and Moscow, Russia . In the majority of the book, my colleagues and I posed questions about human political and social nature as they related to an abortive pen pal project attempted between Roseburg, Oregon and then-Soviet Russia in 1960 . In the final two chapters I authored, I sought to answer those questions by posing a new potential pen pal relationship to fourth-grade students and teachers . The youngsters offered a simple answer: that kids will be kids, in search of new friends . On a broader level, however, the teachers of today and students of the past tell us that, in the words of a sculpture found in a park on the Moskva River, children are the victims of adult vices . What we are left with is a narrative that traverses continents, transcends languages, and collapses decades . It leaves us to ask what the real differences are between seemingly disparate societies in terms of politics, propaganda and human relationships .